Checking in on The List
Where are we with my concerns about the Trump administration?
Back in November, right after the election, I made a list of concerns I had going into the second Trump administration. We are a mere 162 days into the administration, and he has gotten a lot done on The List. Here’s a basic run-down.
| 7/1/25 Assessment | |
| 1. He initiates some version of his Schedule F proposal to transform much of the civil service into partisan positions. | The DOGE firings and ongoing efforts fit this concern. Over 250,000 federal employees are gone. USAID was destroyed, and important agencies like FEMA and NOAA have been weakened, to name just two. |
| 2. He orders the DOJ to cease all investigations into his behavior. | Yes. Further, lawyers and law enforcement who were linked to the investigations were fired. |
| 3. He sells out Ukraine to Russia. | While at times he has been hostile toward Ukraine and often engages in pro-Putin talking points, he at least hasn’t sold Ukraine out. |
| 4. He allows, indeed encourages, Israel to act with impunity in the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon. | He has definitely empowered Netanyahu as a general matter, and talking about actions that sound like ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Largely has done very little. |
| 5. He raises tariffs in a significant way and causes substantial inflation as a result. | This has been an ongoing roller coaster. |
| 6. He appoints utterly unqualified persons to his cabinet. | Yes. In some ways worse than I imagined. |
| 7. Along the lines of #6, he really does empower people like Elon Musk and RFK, Jr. | 100%. Musk was given, for a time, far more power than I thought likely. RFK., Jr. is HHS Secretary and is wreaking havoc on public health policy. |
| 8. He uses the DOJ to go after his enemies and eliminates the norm of DOJ independence. | This is happening. |
| 9. He allows things like child separation at the border. | Worse in some ways. Deporting US citizens instead. |
| 10. He engages in deportations that catch up and victimize American citizens. This will manifest as breaking up families and will include Americans being deported. And, of course, victimized immigrants. | We have seen some of this. |
| 11. He encourages violence by law enforcement. | Masked ICE agents tackling gardeners and the like certainly qualify. Sending people to CECOT and building “Alligator Alcatraz” fits as well. |
| 12. Attacks on the media via the FEC. | Mostly using lawsuits as leverage. |
| 13. Damage to the dollar as the global reserve currency. | Via the Guardian: US dollar has worst first half in more than 50 years amid Trump tariffs |
| 14. Deeper alliances with autocratic governments. | He continues a trend of often being nicer to autocrats than democrats, but there has been no significant move here. |
| 15. He abandons the US role as a global leader of liberal democracy. This ends an important element of the post-WWII order. | He keeps chipping away at this via tariffs and a general lack of understanding or respect for how much stability and prosperity the post-WWII order provided. Or, for that matter, long-term power for the US. |
| 16. Repeal of the ACA. | The ACA itself has not been under attack. Instead, his BBB will slash Medicare, and an estimated 12-20 million persons could lose health insurance as a result. |
| 17. Some new version of the Muslim ban. | “I have determined to fully restrict and limit the entry of nationals of the following 12 countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. These restrictions distinguish between, but apply to both, the entry of immigrants and nonimmigrants.” |
| 18. J6 and related pardons. | This was worse than expected: he pardoned all the J6ers. |
| 19. Takes the US out of NATO. | While often hostile to NATO, they flattered him this week, so now he likes NATO. |
So, in all, he has been pretty much the bad president I figured he would be.
Here are some additions to the list.
- Direct attacks on university leadership and curricula.
- Attacks on the structure of scientific research in the United States.
- On Immigration:
- Disappearances.
- Revocation of TPS for 500,000 Haitians and 350,000 Venezuelans.
- Deporting immigrants to torture prisons on purpose (CECOT). On that count, let’s not forget shackles ASRM.
- Deporting immigrants to terrible third-party locations (e.g., Libya and South Sudan).
- Building camps (e.g., Alligator Alcatraz) and a token attempt to use Gitmo.
- Unnecessarily sending in the National Guard and US Marines to deal with small-scale demonstrations in Los Angeles.
- Risking involvement in a war in the Middle East by bombing Iran (and doing so without Congressional authorization or even fully briefing the Gang of Eight).
- And, of course, all the things I have noted that are Right in Front of Our Noses.
I didn’t include tax cuts for the wealthy, since that comes with the Republican territory (but did note the massive cuts to healthcare in the table).
To quote Journey, “It goes on and on and on and on.”
I am, no doubt, forgetting something.
I know that this is nitpicking, but a hand full of “J6” were commuted not pardoned.
Incompetence is devastatingly effective.
“We the people” really dropped the ball on this. It’s almost as if the social fabric of the nation has been shredded, or something.
Not sure where on the list this would go but Trump’s and Trump family corruption to enrich themselves is on full view.
“A republic….if you can keep it.” Benjamin Franklin and his fellow Founders thought impeachment would be the solution if a corrupt ignoramus like Trump become president, but they wrongly assumed that, at any given time, a majority of the members of Congress would be honorable people who would take their oath of office seriously and protect that republic. The majority of our Congress stands aside as a (likely mentally ill) megalomaniac, aided and abetted by grifters and xenophobes, wreaks havoc.
@Charley in Cleveland:
One thing I’ve been think about lately is our Congresscritters. Does it seem to everyone (or even just some of us) that less and less “normal” people are running for Congress? You know, people of decent ethics and morals? Or is it just the sociopaths, grifters, and those of flexible ethics the only ones who run?
This post by Ron Filipkowski seems relevant:
Despite the weak exculpatory post of the resident investment guru (snicker) who predicted the end of the world based on 3 weeks data………we find markets at all time highs. Inflation not running wild. And employment just fine. Durable goods up. Tariff income running hot.
That said, not being a rank partisan with not a financial analytical bone in my body, I find myself exactly where I was. I’d wait until Q3 to see how things are really shaking out.
Trump is apparently having a very normal time answering questions at Dixie Dachau, threatening to arrest Zohran Mamdani, deport American citizens born here, and build many more concentration camps.
Also, he’s still very fond of the word groceries, which he hadn’t heard in a long time before he started using it.
Totally normal.
ETA: he also approves of a plan by Ron DeSantis to deputize national guardsmen to use them as immigration judges. That’s some pretty out of the box thinking from DeSantis right there.
Connor, when he learns of the Holocaust, the Killing Fields, the Manson Murders, or Columbine:
“The market’s doing well!”
MAGA!
We must always and forever refer to this abomination as “Alligator Auschwitz.”
@Gustopher:
Or this, this works too.
@Connor:
Go back and read the posts. My point in every single one of them was that the markets didn’t like the tariffs. I never predicted anything.
You are simply lying.
Read, for example, the first sentence of the second paragraph of this post.
Or the first paragraph after the second chart of this post.
Or the clear argument made in this post.
Read just the headline of this post, The Markets Continue to React Negatively to Trumponomics.
So, which is it? Are you just a liar, or do you have serious reading comprehension problems?
@Franklyn Adams: Fair correction.
An addition: the speed and intensity of the “monetization” (i.e. naked corruption) of the Presidency are much greater than I expected.
@Steven L. Taylor: How hospitable of you to posit this as an either/or.
@Scott: @Kingdaddy: The corruption does belong on the list.
@Kingdaddy: It would be funny if it wasn’t so gross and awful.
@Kingdaddy: Not me. He did it his first term and totally got away with it and while there were a few investigations after his terms they went nowhere. In that context I fully expected him to go into grifting mode even before he was sworn in, which he did (Trumpcoin, Melaniacoin).
Steve
@Mikey: I am trying not to get too annoyed in these threads, so perhaps that led to some magnanimity.
That was not my first impulse, I must confess.
@Connor: Yeah. I knew that post was going to backfire when he posted it because even the readers of Zero Hedge contextualize market data to conform to the story the want to tell.
ETA: Maybe even especially Zero Hedge readers, who knows?
As to tariffs, if you guys want to keep transferring the cost of government onto consumers rather than owners of capital, please proceed. I’m relatively confident that I won’t outlive the US’s turn as 800# economy gorilla. (And I live simply enough that I’ll scrape by in an economy where the new standard of wealth is 40 acres and a bag of seed potatoes if I do outlive it.)
@Mikey: I’ll try to remember. It has good rhetorical punch.
In light of this discussion, worth reading this post from John Ganz about how the anti-immigrant animus underlies many of the items on Steven’s list. No, really, read the whole thing. It’s not long. Here’s how it starts:
@Kingdaddy: This. Trump wants the absolute authority to decide who is permitted to be an American, and the absolute authority to render stateless anyone he believes has offended him or his fascistic sense of hierarchy and order.
@Kingdaddy: An excellent post and an excellent post by Ganz.
And it speaks to some of the actual ideology behind Trump’s politics. As well as his desire for power.
@Mikey:
This gets a nomination for the most idiotic thing said on OTB this year. Who’s getting gassed to death in the Everglades?
By the way I toured Auschwitz in 2000. My sister’s mother and father-in-law were concentration camp survivors.
@Gustopher:
Your comment is equally idiotic. Who is getting gassed to death in the Everglades?
Hatred for Trump is turning some OTB commenters into buffoons.
@Bill Jempty: Calling out a concentration camp for what it is, is very far from idiotic. Is the language extreme? Yes, it is. But so is the danger this presents.
@Bill Jempty: Hatred of Trump? No. This isn’t about hatred of the man, it’s about hatred of what he is doing to the country I have served proudly for nearly 40 years.
@Bill Jempty: “Alligator Alcatraz” is a concentration camp, by definition. While it is true that Auschwitz and Dachau eventually also became death camps is a direct logical result of them being concentration camps in the first place.
Is “Alligator Auschwitz” rhetorically over the top? Sure. The point is to draw attention to what is going on here.
Note that Trump made almost a million people from Haiti and Venezuela eligible to be rounded up and sent to places like this by removing TPS. And he is doing so because he classifies them as “vermin” and the “worst of the worst.”
I likely won’t call the place “Alligator Auschwitz,” but I understand the point being made, and it is not because of blind hatred of Trump.
I do not think it will become a death camp, but I do think some people will die there. I further think that the people who transit through there will often be sent by the US to their torture or deaths elsewhere as a direct result of Trump administration policy.
@Steven L. Taylor: “Alligator Amache” would be closer to the mark.
https://www.nps.gov/amch/index.htm
@Kingdaddy: Maybe. I did think of those camps, but the names are not well known.
All of it pretty horrible, regardless.
@Steven L. Taylor: “I do not think it will become a death camp, but I do think some people will die there.”
Seems likely. Considering DHS’s outrage over their choice to temporarily house 8 migrants in a containerized living space on a US military facility adjacent to Djibouti’s main airport, maybe they shouldn’t be eager to keep thousands of detainees in modular facilities served by portable generators—essentially off the grid—in the Florida summer. Such temporary facilities can be set up relatively quickly, but are expensive to operate and prone to system failures.
But what I really wonder is what the facility’s emergency response plan looks like. What do the detainees and employees do in the event of a tornado warning? Or a tropical storm or hurricane watch or warning? Is there a plan to move everyone to a sturdy building? Or to evacuate the site altogether? I’m afraid the stupidity of the marketing (we got mosquitoes…pythons…alligators) reflects the stupidity of the planning of this internment camp.
@Steven L. Taylor:
More Trump derangement syndrome. Prisons, and every state in the union plus the federal government run them since this country was formed or have you forgotten that Professor of Political Science, are places where people are detained because they violated the law or it is being determined they have done so. The county jail is a concentration camp by the reasoning you are spouting above.
@Eusebio:
People die in United States prisons every day on average 12-18 times. Peo
@Bill Jempty:
Sure, but I was pointing out some hazards not associated with a regular jail/prison facility.
@Eusebio: He doesn’t care. It’s the same justification made for any other situation where people are being abused–they deserve whatever happens to them. DHS detainees, prisoners, dreamers, (here’s where I start offending the audience on this thread) Gazans, West Bank Palestinians, economic refugees, whoever. THEY ALL DESERVE WHAT HAPPENS TO THEM. Get it through your thick skulls, lefty snowflakes.
@Bill Jempty:
More Trump Dickriding Syndrome.
Concentration camps by definition are extralegal, used to detain political enemies and others deemed undesirable by the state. The Trump administration’s mass deportation protect has already been found to be operating outside the bounds of law — violating 5th Amendment due process, arbitrarily revoking the legal status of legal migrants and expats, detaining citizens, deporting individuals in error according ti courts, and detaining/deporting others who’ve been convicted of no crimes or only misdemeanor violations.
This scheme is obviously different than imprisoning people who’ve been convicted of felonies in normal legal processes. Like… obviously. The difference couldn’t be more obvious.
@Connor: The market may be back up to new highs, but I am still glad I sold at the last run up in March. Sleep better and, with what’s coming down the pike on inflation and jobs, I am sanguine in my position.
I would be very, very careful about crowing at the new highs.
@Bill Jempty:
This is name-calling, not an argument.
Prisons and county jails are not concentration camps, by definition. And by definition, I mean the literal definition of concentration camps. I don’t usually like the move to go to the dictionary, but here is definition of the word:
Prisons and jails are for criminals who have been accused of a crime or convicted of one. These are not the same things.
BTW, I am not sure why you feel the need to take this tone, especially given your history of getting way too emotional if someone uses a word to describe you that you don’t like (I can think of two specific examples and then there was the time you got all mad at me).
I gave a reasonable answer, whether you agree with it or not. In response, I get name-calling and snark.
That makes it look like you are less confident of your position than you are claiming to be.
@Steven L. Taylor: I guess Connor had a busy night and couldn’t devote the same 5 minutes it took me to find the key posts and bring his own receipts.
@Bill Jempty: This is a weird flex.
First, US prisons are pretty awful places, so I am not sure going there to get solace for your position is a good idea.
Second, given the mass level of incarceration in the US and the length of sentences, this number in a vacuum tells us little.
It is as if you Googled the question and found a link you thought fit your position.
@Bill Jempty: One more thought. Give the degree to which the US prison system has been used to specifically house young Black men, it comes a lot closer to the definition of “concentration camps” than really anyone is should be comfortable with.
Certainly the comparison to US prisons doesn’t disabuse me of the notion that “concentration camp” is rhetorically off the table.
I get it: we have very specific views of “concentration camp” the same way we have e very specific views of “fascism”—but sometimes harsh language is fucking necessary.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Then why are you fine with them being described as such? C0ncentration camps very few people who walked into them came out alive. County, state, federal prisons, are the opposite.
Awful places but we both know there are ones overseas that make ours look like condos.
I feel as confident in my opinions as I usually do. Compare that to the persons around here that didn’t think Biden was declining mentally, that he’d never withdraw from the race, and that the Dems would win last November. People were very confident in some or all of the above. Yourself included. The response of that confidence was insults and belittlement thrown my way at times. Those are the tools of the weak or people less than confident in their opinions.
Its a symptom seen alot around here. People foaming at the mouth at anything Trump does. Not everything is a catastrophe, take for instance the Dow Jones, just too much is and some people are blind to any good.
There are criminal illegal aliens who deserve to be deported. Due process first of course.
@Bill Jempty:
Relevance?
Of this I have no doubt. Doesn’t explain your tone or your unwillingness to engage in actual discussion.
And this has the fuck all to do with what we are discussing?
This is whataboutism.
So it is everyone else’s fault you called names?
How do you know they are criminals?
And they deserve imprisonment in a concentration camp and possible deportation to places like Libya?
Own what you are defending.
@Bill Jempty:
I missed this earlier, as I was answering on my phone.
This demonstrates your misunderstanding of the term, despite my providing a definition and noting the distinction between concentration camps and death camps.
The US internment camps, as referenced by Kingdaddy above, were concentration camps. And, thankfully, most people who went in came out alive.